Interview on China-EU relations with Professor Balme

(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2008-12-02 11:50

Professor Richard Balme teaches politics at Tsinghua University in Beijing, before which he taught at Peking University. He has lived in Beijing for more than three years. Previously he taught at Sciences Po in Paris, France and at the Hong Kong Baptist University. His main area of expertise is EU-China relations, including recent study of environmental issues between the two.

Professor Richard Balme

Q: So, what is happening in relations between China and the European Union?

A: The development of these relations in the last year has been quite significant because of the events we witnessed during the Olympics, and because of the financial crisis. More generally they are quite characteristic of the general process of globalization.

The first trend can be understood as a "normalization" of EU-China relations, after a honeymoon period, which ended in 2005. The second trend I believe is globalization of these relations. We talk about the need for cooperation between the PRC and European institutions on global issues like climate change, trade, the financial crisis, and poverty reduction. So increasingly we see these two entities, Europe and China trying to act together in globalization.

With this new setting also comes the fact that both sides and their relations are scrutinized by public opinion at the global level. That means EU-China relations are subject to criticism by international social movements, and by public opinion on both sides. Now that doesn't make things very easy, in particular because with this situation comes what can be called a gap between the reality or the executive aspect of EU-China policy and the public opinion aspect of the EU-China diplomacy. And there can be an important distance between what governments actually do together and the expectations or perceptions of public opinions.

For a number of reasons, this gap is probably more important than what can be observed in the case of the United States. So sometimes relations are more difficult to predict between Chinese and European governments.

My final point would be the following: with the normalization and globalization of these relations, they also tend to become more ordinary in a way. I'm not saying they are not important, neither that they cannot meet some tensions. But obviously they tend to come second after other types of relations. It is hard to imagine that Europe would be ready to significantly damage its relations with the United States to maintain good relations with China, and I'm sure China is not ready to let go of relations with the United States for the sake of having good relations with Europe. Probably when we talk about strategic issues, other actors, like Russia, are more important both to China and to Europe, than China and Europe to each other. That's not necessarily a bad thing for bilateral relations not to have direct strategic interactions. After all it means that conflicts are unlikely and that peace is secured. But It also means that some issues can sometimes take a greater importance than would otherwise be the case. That being said, the future lies in the hands of governments and there are important issues like the financial crisis, global warming, probably energy security where the cooperation between Europe and China can be extremely significant and I believe can potentially change the course of international relations.

Some argue the West will decline once the East starts playing a more important role in the world. What's your opinion of the issue?

I personally don't see that at all as a zero-sum game, as a situation where what is going to be won by the East will be lost by the West. We must also question the ideas of East and West. European civilization was founded by Greece and Greece had more relations with Egypt and India than what is today England, and had the greatest contribution to what we now call Western civilization. It is now easy to see that although Europe and the US are part of what is called the West, there are a number of differences between them. What we usually call the East includes China, India and Japan – where significant differences have been here for a while already. Twenty years ago everyone was talking about the economic rise of Japan as a potential "threat for the West", but it is not a concern anymore . Of course the power of western countries is overall declining with globalization. It is declining because in the past it was absolutely out of balance. It's now a little more temperate, but that is good news.

I think the real challenge is not where will power go, and whether the West loses all of its power. The West will remain powerful for a very long time, but we don't have the proper institutions to govern the world in a more equitable way. And as development is spreading, natural resources, energy resources are limited and the pressure on the environment is extremely strong. So the shift must be to better, more sustainable development. That is not only a domestic problem, but also a global problem. It involves the sharing of resources and access to development between different countries that will be difficult to negotiate. And we are now in a situation where China is important in development, India will be, Russia is, a large number of countries are accessing development. Therefore there is a stringent need to design institutions able to to manage the distribution of resources in a more equitable way. This is basically where cooperation between Europe and China will be critical.

Could you say a bit more about the cooperation between the EU and China?

On the European side, the current priority is climate change. This is so because even if there are some difficulties in trade relations, they are part of long term and normal relations. Europe wants to make sure China can sign some form of agreement and come as close as it can to commit itself to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the future. So the two parties are working very hard to develop important cooperation programs. One of them is a project to build a clean coal energy production unit with zero greenhouse gas emissions. It is an advanced experimental energy production project to be designed in the coming years by joint EU-China cooperation programs.

And then there is the financial crisis that has of course become a very important item on the agenda. The EU has been trying to persuade the Chinese authorities to join their position in the Washington G20 summit, in order to pressure the US to deeply transform and adapt the international financial system. I believe the Europeans have in mind launching a very ambitious policy through the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and it would need some further funding, which could come from countries with some important foreign currency reserves like China. So climate change and the financial crisis are the two very important issues at the moment.

Is there an appreciation by the EU of the problems faced by China's leadership at the moment, which seem to be getting worse by the day?

I believe so. It's not the idea of China subsidizing developed countries as is sometimes argued, not at all. Rather the Europeans aim at developing joint mechanisms to sustain countries that could face very stringent difficulties, most of which are likely to be developing countries. So I perfectly see the dilemma for the Chinese authorities, but there is a call for China, as a major player in globalization, to take a little bit more responsibility in international relations, and to be more vocal in the discussions about reforming institutional institutions.

One sometimes argues that European political positions fall short of credibility, and that economic interests in the end determine EU-China relations. But economic interdependency doesn't mean countries can't discuss strategic issues, human rights issues, political issues, why should it be so? On the contrary, I believe economic relations in many cases open the way to substantial political discussions and sometimes significant domestic reforms. For instance, WTO membership in most countries supports the development of market institutions and the legal system. It is true that diplomacy is a "two-level game", and that it has to be played both in the international and in the domestic arena. That is fine, but it is not specifically European. The Chinese government doesn't escape that. They also enter that game. They also give something to Chinese public opinion in the conduct of Foreign policy.

The EU has traditionally been a military ally of the United States, who is always saying they are afraid of China's military build-up. When will the EU lift the arms embargo against China?

I don't hear the European chancelleries talking very much about China's armament, at least not at all in the same tone you can find in the US diplomatic documents. The general picture I get from most the European chancelleries is that the development of China's military capacity is roughly in line with the general development of the country. I don't find any concept of China's threat one way or another in European diplomatic documents.

How could the EU arms embargo be lifted? That's a difficult question for the time being. It failed to be lifted in 2005 for a number of reasons. There's no consensus among European countries on that issue. Those who favor the lifting of the embargo think it is obsolete, but at the same time there is the gap between public opinion and executive diplomacy, this embargo has been taken to protest against the human rights situation in China, and the European governments and the EU institutions in particular would need a very strong move by China to show something has changed on that front and that there is no reason to maintain this embargo. A lot of things have changed, but they have changed very gradually and some didn't change much. So basically European governments have nothing to show to public opinion to justify the lifting of the embargo against China, and that makes it very difficult to build a consensus position among the member states. This is where we are, and on the European side, the embargo question is not really on the agenda. Probably things will change in the future, when we are in a different situation. But the time has not come yet.